[CAROLYN Resnick]: So it’s the nature of the horse to understand that if you’re not going to take the leadership role, the horse will lead. That’s the basic nature of the horse and I think that’s when people get into the alpha talk.

The thing for us to understand is that because we don’t keep horses in communities with one another, they really are in a state of limbo. And they are in a state of not maturing properly.

And I believe it is our job to go in there and develop the social skills in the horse, and the coping skills and the character that it takes to be a horse - fair, just, moral, and effective in himself. It is our job to do that instead of thinking that we need to take control. That’s not what we need to do. What we need is to build enrichment in that horse’s life and be able to bring him up and be the character he needs to be, since horses, when they grow up in a community of horses, shape each other’s character. And that’s what makes them great.

When a horse has to have his character shaped, it develops coping skills for him, and people who just take horses and say “oh, we don’t want to be abusive and we need to do this, this, and this”, they get the horse to the point that it can’t cope with anything at all, because he says “oh, I can’t do this and I can’t do that”, “oh, this is too much for me and that’s too much for me”. What happens to that poor horse is that he can’t accept anything because he’s not been asked to cope.

[HFL]: How important it is to keep horses in some form of community with other horses? There are many horses that are being kept by themselves.